Despite having never heard of any of the places JRoth claims fresh donuts exist in Pittsburgh, I do enjoy the freshly made extremely cheap tofu at...one of the East Asian stores in the Strip district. Lotus?

I'm talking about the basic dried tofu you get by taking regular tofu and drying it. No need for braided rice straw or snow or any of that. You can do it in your oven at home, using store-bought tofu from Safeway. Recipes on the web. Simple. Delicious.

Also, a French friend of mine just got engaged and told me he did not give, nor does he ever plan to give, his bride-to-be an engagement ring. He says French people don't follow that custom. Is he on the up-and-up or just pulling a fast one on his fiancee?

I found some (of some other, probably less rarified brand) in a Japanese store and thought, well, that sounds interesting! It's an ingredient, though, not something you would want to eat in the state it's sold in. It's like a little tofu sponge for whatever you simmer it in.

Also, a French friend of mine just got engaged and told me he did not give, nor does he ever plan to give, his bride-to-be an engagement ring. He says French people don't follow that custom. Is he on the up-and-up or just pulling a fast one on his fiancee?

I was under the impression it was a purely American custom? At least so I've heard from some Germans.

In my country, the marriage is sacred. We do not use the engagement ring, or the birth control, but just make the sacred whoopie and say goodbye. My heart will be broken if you do not marry me tonight.

If Le Frenchman is marrying an American girl, a ring might be advisable.

Non, he should stand up against the stupid "tradition" which is in fact an obligation for many people. If you want to give someone a piece of jewelry, rock on. But stop telling men that they have to drop 5 or 10 grand on a ring. ogged is on my side.

Non, he should stand up against the stupid "tradition" which is in fact an obligation for many people.

The fact that it is an obligation for many renders it advisable that he not stand up against the stupid tradition unless he is sure his bride-to-be also considers it a stupid tradition. I'm not even big on jewelry generally, but it bugged the hell out of me personally.

I passed on buying a new motorcycle for that friggin' rock.

I would have been perfectly happy with an engagement motorcycle in lieu of ring.

Non, he should stand up against the stupid "tradition" which is in fact an obligation for many people.

It's not likely to work if she likes the tradition. Or if he does; there's a lot of pressure on men. $5K-10K is hardly necessary or common (well, at least in my non-elite circles), of course, and plenty of people I know gave rings that had other colorful stones.

#35: Sorry for being thick about this, but I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic about the diamond, the bike, both, or neither. My best guess is that you're sarcastically implying that the diamond has lost most of its value, while I would still be happily riding the bike today.

Well. First, there is no reason why the diamond should have lost 90% of its value. Jewelry doesn't wear out. Second, a bike will depreciate very quickly (unless it's a "classic", or possibly a BMW or Harley here in Japan), although it would not fall apart in 2 years.

In general, therefore, a diamond will hold its value much, much better than a motorcycle. After about 10 years, the diamond should still be worth about the same (unless those new artificial lab-grown diamonds flood the market), while the bike would be worth much less than what I would have paid to buy it. So I got that going for me.

First, there is no reason why the diamond should have lost 90% of its value. Jewelry doesn't wear out.

I think Ned might have been referring to your practical inability to sell the diamond for more than about 10% of what you paid for it, regardless of how much it might allegedly be worth.

cf. that whole long ranty thing from dsquared a couple years back, the whole fake "scarcity" thing w/r/t diamonds, and the secret vaults where debeers keeps all the non-synthetic diamonds so they don't flood the market.

42: Definitely true, but we managed to stay reasonably sane about the whole thing. (Not out of any great virtue: I didn't care particularly; standards for 'acceptable engagement ring' in his milieu seem to be more along the lines of 'nice gift that I can afford' rather than 'I bought this chick for a multicarat rock')

People do get weird about it. My mother was poised to judge Buck harshly if the ring had been insufficient. (She's judged him harshly anyway, but she's had to make up other stuff because the ring he got me was a very pretty sapphire.) It's a dumb "tradition", but there are social penalties to not playing along.

#45: Point taken, but so long as the supply is kept artificially low, our diamond should be worth a lot more than 10% of the purchase price. If the only alternative for a buyer is to buy at retail prices, I should be able to undercut the retailers only slightly. Even if I have to go lower because the diamond is "used", I don't see why I would have to drop all the way down to 10%.

66: No, but in many ways the proposal was in fact the beginning of the end. Story time?

I had bought him a claddagh ring. Not planning any sort of proposal, but I knew he liked it and I was in love and he was coming for his first visit to the U.S. Upon my giving it to him, he promptly popped the question -- perhaps afraid I was going to beat him to the punch. In love, blah blah blah, I said yes. "Great, but don't tell anyone, okay?" No one was told for another 3 months other than my then best friend. Another 3 months later, he did produce a ring, which conveniently doubled as a birthday present. I did, in fact, rather like the ring (very simple band with a very simple sapphire).

BRIDETOBE: Take a look! Yay!
PERSON: Congratulations! Nice ring, very interesting design! Is it an antique!
BRIDETOBE: Yes, it was his grandmother's, it was such a nice surprise. We're going to go pick out my own in a couple months.

ERROR DOES NOT COMPUTE

Now there are three rings in this process?

The thing that "we're going to go pick out" is the wedding bands, not the engagement ring. You already have an engagement ring.

HER: Blah blah conflict diamonds blah blah not certain that's actually a good argument currently blah blah can I have a sparkly thing that is maybe a sapphire because let's face it I like sparkly things.
HIM: Blah blah tradition blah blah barely know your parents and they will think I'm cheap and then I'll be unemployed waiting on the green card blah blah manhood blah blah what if it's a diamond from a mine in Canada.

[time passes]
HIM: Just checking, but you'd kill me if I spent two months' salary on a ring, right? Because my cousin says that's traditional.
HER: Yup. Debt is also traditional.

the manmade diamonds are really nice now. I got a hand-cut one, emerald cut, and had it set in an antique-style ring setting with pave of real diamonds (because the man-made ones don't do small as well). 4.3 carats, that shit looks amazing. my 10th anniversary present, but I did the organizing, both of us were quite happy that way. my engagement ring was a sapphire and I took diamond earrings my grandmother had given me to be the surrounds, it's very pretty and no one went into debt over it, though my annoying sister-in-law scorned it because she is a bitch. jesurgislac: I bet that the move towards more widespread gay marrige will be accompanied by lots more queer couples falling for wedding-industrial bullshit in a package deal.

Alameida, the only serious drawback to civil partnership/marriage now being freely available to same-sex couples is that, well, we will discover that:

1. lesbians and gays can made exactly the same kind of stupid decisions to get married to someone they shouldn't as straight do;

2. Lesbians and gays turn out to be exactly as susceptible to push-marketing about stuff they Have To Have to be Properly Married as straights do.

1 is already proven totally true.

2 is going to take a bit longer. One, a lot of big commercial firms haven't yet figured out how to sell to same-sex couples, and two, it is harder to convince couples who know damn well that three or four years ago they wouldn't have been allowed to legally wed at all that there are some things they Simply Must Do because Everyone Does.

The last gay wedding fair I went to (I was reporting on it, y'know) it hadn't occurred to any of the limo companies that they needed at least two publicity shots of male-male and female-female couples in their limos, instead of the relentless parade of bride-and-groom.

81: I recall this being a pretty big story in 2007. I wonder what the uptake has been.

The Walt Disney Company has decided to include same-sex commitment ceremonies in its popular Fairy Tale Wedding program. Packages range from $8,000 to over $45,000 depending on how magical same-sex couples want the experience. Disney Parks and Resorts spokesperson Donn Walker told Reuters.

it is harder to convince couples who know damn well that three or four years ago they wouldn't have been allowed to legally wed at all that there are some things they Simply Must Do because Everyone Does.

On the other hand, it's easy enough under the circumstances to feel like there are some things that you Simply Must Do so that it feels like a Real Wedding.

redfoxtailshrub: No, actually. Not in my experience. You know it's a real wedding because it ends in with a real, legally valid certificate saying so. That's what I mean: it will take some time for same-sex couples to get over this "Dear sweet wow we are actually MARRIED" and start to think like mixed-sex couples "Oh, but it will not feel like a proper wedding unless we have this, have that, do this, buy the other." Then again, all the civil partnerships/weddings I have direct experience of have been of couples getting married at last - after ten, twenty, thirty years together - so maybe there'll be a difference for couples who first get together post civil partnership.

Definitely. But my prediction is: you won't have to wait too long. Of course many couples--especially those (as you say) getting married after having been together for many years, as well as people who find the whole scene politically distasteful--will never wind up feeling that way, but this is true of mixed-sex couples, too.

I had a friend whose live-in fiance wanted to keep the $5000 ring when they split up. He tried to take it back and she called the police and falsely charged domestic violence. He spent the weekend in jail and ended up paying a $500 fine and going to an anger management course. He also went bankrupt for relationship-related reasons.

Anger management was never one of his many problems, but after finishing the course he quit gambling, cut down his drinking, quit smoking, and married someone else. From meeting the first woman to marrying the second took him about 18 months. He was 61 years old, too, not a teenager.

The point is that he didn't get more than about half his money back on the ring. It's like the car losing a third of it's value the minute you drive it off the lot.

I had a friend whose live-in fiance wanted to keep the $5000 ring when they split up. He tried to take it back and she called the police and falsely charged domestic violence. He spent the weekend in jail and ended up paying a $500 fine and going to an anger management course. He also went bankrupt for relationship-related reasons.

The point is look at all the lawyers that they kept employed! Stimulate the economy! Engaged in highly emotional conflict.

Then again, all the civil partnerships/weddings I have direct experience of have been of couples getting married at last - after ten, twenty, thirty years together - so maybe there'll be a difference for couples who first get together post civil partnership.

The handful of same sex couples I know have already incorporated some W-IC traditions. (Rings, gowns, cakes, honeymoons.) I suspect more legitimacy will create more marketing opportunities with the same wedding just-so stories.

He tried to take it back and she called the police and falsely charged domestic violence.

Depending on how this played out (did he try to take it off her finger?), it doesn't really sound like a false charge; it doesn't take all that much to substantiate calling the police.

I have my engagement ring all picked out! There's a second-hand jewelry place on my commute, and in the window there's a nice simple band of teeny-tiny diamonds all linked together in gold. I think it costs about $1000, maybe less.

91: Yes, so have the couples I know. The ones who like to dress up buy fancy gowns; the ones who like to go on holiday together go on honeymoon together; the ones who like cake, get cake. (Really, doesn't everyone like cake?)

90: Apparently there was a lesbian couple planning their wedding where they needed two aisles and two "Who giveth this woman to be married to this woman?" because neither father-of-the-bride was about to revoke their right to walk down the aisle withhis daughter and hand her to the spouse of her choice. Which is both kind of sweet and more than slightly crazy. Oh patriarchy.

He went into the bedroom and she grabbed him from behind. She claimed he shoved her.

The guy had multiple enormous problems, but I believe him when he says that violence was not one of them. He was really broken up about the whole thing because he would have been terribly ashamed if it were true, and it's on his public record because he was bankrupt and his lawyer didn't want to contest it for the amount of money he'd be getting.

When did "engagement photos" become a thing? Why would you have engagement pictures? What do they mean? They aren't (usually? necessarily?) pictures of the event of your getting engaged; they are pictures of the two of you together, in artfully contrived pseudo natural scenes. But who and what are they for?

I come from a world where staged portrait photos for the purpose of one's personal photo albums aren't really considered appropriate, so I'm clearly not calibrated like normal people. (There are snapshots, where the intended audience is the people in the photos and their friends, and then there are the photos that photographers take for the purpose of publication or as art pieces, for audiences of strangers. You are allowed to have prints of those professional photos of yourself, but you wouldn't have commissioned them. Wedding photos are an allowed exception, but even these are actually a little dubious. Certainly one doesn't keep too many of them around.)

Still, even though my feelings about photos are clearly not the norm, I still think that this new ubiquity of photo-shoot engagement pictures is genuinely odd.

I actually quite like the engagement photo trend. Most of my cousins have gotten married in the last few years, and so when I get wedding invitations I like to peer at the new cousin-in-law and wonder at how the couple has chosen to present themselves. Since I have almost never gone out to the weddings---time, money, boring Mormon receptions---the engagement photo is the only visual referent I have for a while of the new family.

103: Yep, I'm about as secular as you can get, and simply couldn't figure out how to get a non-cleric to come to my wedding to perform the ceremony. Judges and such will marry you if you come to an office, or if you have a personal connection so they're doing it as a favor, but I couldn't find anyone for hire.

That just seems so hollow to me. If you're a believer, of course you want the minister there to administer the rite of your choosing. But if all you want is an emcee, why should it be a stranger -- or why have one at all?

(Chalk this up to genuine curiosity, not if-you-were-only-as-enlightened-as-me preachiness. I didn't 'get' engagement rings either, but at least they've been explained; not this part.)

Legal requirement, it's different state by state but I think NY is reasonably in step with most of them. Only a cleric or a small set of officials can conduct a marriage legally, so if you want the legal marriage to take place at the party where your friends and family are, you need a cleric. (You could go and get legally married at an office, and then have a mock ceremony at your 'wedding', but that feels weird.)

But if all you want is an emcee, why should it be a stranger -- or why have one at all?

Because if you want to be legally married, you have to be married by someone who has the legal authority: judge, justice of the peace, religious whosit, fake religious whosit (Universal Life), or sea captain. Obviously, the latter is to be preferred, but you don't want to force your guests (those you like) to be martyrs to seasickness.

You could go and get legally married at an office, and then have a mock ceremony at your 'wedding' not bother with the rest of the wedding-industrial complex, as someone put it above. Just have a party (or several, in different places) some time.

Oh yes, that. In the country where I got married, the part with the civil official is required. In France, too -- I went to a wedding there where all the wedding guests went to a ceremony to a conference room at city hall before we went to the church. (The first event was much more interesting, IMO).

Getting a bit preachy now, but I don't see why an 'authentic' marriage ceremony officiated by a friendly stranger is preferred to a 'mock' ceremony. I mean, a) there's a ceremony and b) the participants wind up married, right? What's missing? Do the guests get irate? "Hey, this is bullshit, we came to see wedlock!"

In Taiwan I attended a hybrid Sino-American wedding. The bride had two dresses, the American one white and the Chinese one gaudy and mostly red, and changed in the middle.

As I remember, in traditional Chinese weddings the officiants are the two fathers. Priests do mostly funerals. The wedding is a big feast. At least some funerals are big feasts too. An 80+ y.o. woman died in my neighborhood, and I saw an entire 500+ lb. hog carcass being prepared for the feast.

My fiancee is the same size as her mom was when she got married, and her mom saved her wedding dress all these years. "Why did you save your wedding dress?" I say. "Oh, I don't know, I just liked it!" she says. I was sort of trying to get a feel as to whether it might be, you know, possibly re-used. But that's never even crossed her mind.

You could go and get legally married at an office, and then have a mock ceremony at your 'wedding', but that feels weird.

This is pretty much the standard thing to do (only in reverse) in my experience. It's what I did, my sister did, and most of the people I know well enough to be aware of the details did. There's the church and family part of the wedding and then a legal niceties bit which is not ceremonial at all, just some paperwork that needs to be taken care of. The real marriage is sealed at "I do" and the legal bits are just formalities like getting a joint checking account.

I think SSM proponents could get real traction if they started talking about the fact that marriage is really two distinct things: The mutual commitment between two people as recognized by family and community, and the legal recognition that entitles the couple to certain legal benefits. If prop 8 opponents had pushed the distinction between "Government Marriage" and "Church Marriage" they might have peeled off enough opposition to win.

This starts getting into philosophy of language, doesn't it? People want to witness important events -- the 'wedding' tradition is one where your friends and family watch you as your status changes from two single people to a family. Getting quietly married in an office, and then inviting people to a non-ceremony reception is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but it's a significant social change from current American tradition. Getting quietly married in an office, and then having a mock ceremony at which no actual legal change of status takes place for your friends and family to witness seems weird to me, as missing the point of why ceremonies take place and people want to witness them.

Getting quietly married in an office, and then having a mock ceremony at which no actual legal change of status takes place for your friends and family to witness seems weird to me

My sister had a mock ceremony after her temple wedding. I think it was largely because her parents (or sisters) couldn't go into the temple with her. The ring-exchanging ceremony was a little strange, and none of my cousins have bothered to follow her example.

I crossed with 115: to the extent the ceremony you invite the family too is a meaningful ceremony, even if not the legal event, that doesn't strike me as odd at all. And of course meaning is where you make it.

111: You know, one of the things we considered for convenience was for shiv and I to have a civil ceremony as soon as he moved down here (which would start his paperwork, including his work permit, rolling) and have the religious ceremony/party later. I thought this was sensible, especially given costs given the July 30 fee hike at USCIS of $700 and the opportunity costs due to missing work due to not being allowed to work legally (about $12K).

This was not a view that flew over well with shiv, and it was a view that crashed and burned with my family. So I think the pressure is stronger than you might think.

115.2 - In my experience, once you start pointing out that there's civil marriage, which is how you get all your legal rights, and religious marriage, and these are two separate things, you suddenly get assholes coming out of the woodwork yawping that "we should get government out of the marriage business"! and that unless you have a cleric perform your marriage ceremony, you should only be allowed to have a "civil union".

It does seem odd that in the US, you can't have a registrar just do your marriage ceremony legally. It's the cheapest/easiest way to get married in the UK: go to a registry office and have a registrar perform the ceremony, which doesn't take more than 20 minutes, then go somewhere else (if you like) and have a party. Presumably you can get married in City Hall by a clerk, if you want that, it's just that the ceremony is a bit kind of truncated?

Friends got legally wed at a registry office in civil partnership last year, and then they had a lovely ceremony performed by a humanist celebrant, with their older step/daughters doing readings and their younger children distributing rose-petals. It was some time after their 10th anniversary, I think.

Right. An awful lot of couples I've known have had non-traditional wedding/whatevers, but there is usually some aspect of the process that is a social & familial expression of the change.

That part is important, I think. But it's really not important to have it mediated by some external idea of what it should be. Particularly if some of that mediation is done by people trying to sell you something.

123: I'm totally with you on how it ought to be, but I think you're missing certain patriarchal aspects of the tradition -- not that you don't understand the history, but that you're not recognizing how strong the pull still is. Which is to say that many, many people are attached to the idea of the legal and symbolic marriage taking place at the same time because it was previously so important that the legal transfer of property also have the religious seal of approval. Most people don't consciously think that way anymore, of course, but the strength of the idea has been passed down, even if the specific reasons for it have faded.

That wasn't very articulate, but I think you can suss out what I mean.

you suddenly get assholes coming out of the woodwork yawping that "we should get government out of the marriage business"

You do indeed. These assholes aren't on our side anyway, so it's not like they are going to change things one way or another. The mushy middle is what will sway things for SSM, and they are potentially influenced by the notion that SSM means churches being forced to recognize the marriage (a lie actively promoted by opponents). Breaking through that will help our side.

The thread has moved on a bit, but I just realized that, even in my recent, financially distressed state*, I've never earned as little as half of AB's engagement ring/month. At the time it was a bit more than a week's salary - maybe 2 weeks' take-home.

We went with a vintage piece with a small diamond and smaller sapphires; we're semi-traditionalists, I guess.

* I can't find a bill from the water company more recent than October; have they simply given up? We still have water.

105-108: Massachusetts has a nice work-around for this: Anybody can apply for (and basically always gets) a special one-day license to solemnize a marriage. Some friends asked me to do this for them - I declined, but not because it wouldn't have been possible.

105-108: Massachusetts has a nice work-around for this: Anybody can apply for (and basically always gets) a special one-day license to solemnize a marriage.

Yes! Snark did this for friends of ours. I think they make it so you can only get this kind of license once a year. In Pennsylvania, anyone can get a special Quaker marriage license, which entitles you to get married without any officiant at all--you can, of course, also have an unofficial officiant involved in your ceremony with one of these. That's what we did for our wedding.

1.) I do think that Justices of the Peace will come to you. They just raised the rate that they're allowed to charge by about $50 in MA. If they provide flowers, or whatever, they can bill separately for that. I don't remember whether they can charge for travel expenses.

2.) I can not stand my boyfriend's brother's fiancee. She is a Ph.D. student in biochem and one of the most incurious people I've ever met. She was making the ugliest cross stitch, and she's a big fan of scrapbooking--which is not juat keeping a scrapbook. BF hates her worse than I do, and he needs to deal with emotional issues, because he actually told her to fuck off in front of his parents at Christmas.

I guess that there is plenty of Wedding Industrial Complex in Canada, because they were going on about how the average wedding now costs $30 thousand. BF's father shuddered, and I said, "I know. It's ridiculous." Apparently, even though they are grad students, they're going to pay for this themselves. They do have pretty sweet stipends though $30-$40K completely tax free.

She was born in Poland. Is the WIC big there? We were talking about rings, and I said that I thought I'd rather have a colored one. My Mom's is a sapphire surrounded by small diamonds set in white gold, which I think is more interesting. Her response: "Not me, I want a rock."

There was also a big fight about whether buying a house is always economically advisable. This followed BF's dad telling BF that he'd seen a presentation from his financial advisor saying that it's not, which he mentioned in part, because BF was depressed about the possibility of ever being able to afford a condo in Eastern Mass. Brother and fiancee didn't know shit about what they were talking about. Ugh. Brother is much nicer when fiancee is not around, but parents desperately want BF to be able to get along with fiancee, because they want the brothers to see each other in later years.

True story, apparently. It was the clerk's first time trying to find out the celebrant's name at a Quaker wedding. Which is just as complicated as the QB and QG's simultaneous (and both correct) responses makes it sound.

Jesus, maybe you can set up one of those complicated barter deals sometimes featured on sitcoms. You don't need a free divorce, but you do need oak barrels. Will knows someone who needs a divorce but doesn't have barrels, oak or otherwise. With 5 or 6 intermediate deals, the whole thing ought to work out.

Getting quietly married in an office, and then having a mock ceremony at which no actual legal change of status takes place for your friends and family to witness seems weird to me, as missing the point of why ceremonies take place and people want to witness them.

If that were to be an issue, I'd do it in the reverse order. Go throw the entire wedding with a fake minister and sorta forget to tell anybody. Afterwards, you drive off accompanied by tin cans and hit city hall, all dressed up. And if someone gets cold feet, well, you just skip city hall.

I think I recognize it, I'm just pointing out that in fact it really is quite possible to resist it and do something else. There's social pressure to do all sorts of things, which doesn't make them universally good ideas.

Not in the U.S., Ottawa. It's a special provision to try to get top students to stay in Canada.

It's actually broader than that. It used to be that anyone could write off the first few thousand dollars of any scholarship. If I recall correctly though, as of a few years ago you can write off all of it. Tuition itself has always been a write off (and is much lower than the US, usually) but is often a separate scholarship anyway.

Of course, this is more benefit to students with bigger scholarships, but it isn't particularly aimed at them. Typically if you're in the running for big national scholarships, schools will add more anyway. I don't know if this has had the effect of reducing that, or not.

The more byzantine case is FICA. If my understanding of the situation is correct, though stipend income can be subject to income taxes, it is not subject to FICA taxes--so long as you are a full time student when you receive that income. At my institution, we aren't enrolled in the "Research" course during the summer, even though those of us who are done with course work are basically doing the same class of things (i.e., lab work) year-round. So because I am technically not a full-time student during the summer, my income should be (cavet to come later) subject to FICA during that period (even though, again, my daily activities remain the same.)

The next complication is that this depends on whether I am in the university's system as an "academic employee" or as a "student." You see, even though we're all students, some of us are paid off grants that can only be paid to employees, and some of us are paid off grants that are explictly for trainees. So it is only because of the label on the grant the my PI is using to fund me that I am an "employee," and hence that my income is in theory (caveat next) subject to FICA for the part of the year when I am supposedly not in school.

The caveat is that when the IRS changed the rule to make us FICA-eligble when not enrolled, CA went and tried to prevent this, arguing that enrollment status doesn't affect daily activities for us. The compromise position was to allow the university to stick the money that would go to FICA taxes into some sort of defferred compensation plan, where it sits and earns about 1% interest. So, in the end, during the summer months, a portion of my salary equal to what I would pay in FICA taxes is placed into a separate account that I can't access until I graduate. Kinda weird, huh?

Aren't they just used for invitations and the announcement in the newspaper? Ever since I was a kid the local newspaper in my hometown carried photos of couples announcing engagements if they gave them one to print.

Also, I've come to realize that I can't talk much about the fight for legal marriage - and I do want that word, "civil union" will not do, thank you - without getting so angry that I start to sound like I'm angry at the people with whom I'm having the conversation, so I basically don't talk about it anymore.

Eat tempeh instead of tofu. I think it is much healthier for you anyway, because it is fermented. And delicious! Once one can get through the damn packaging, cut it into squares and saute it in a light oil, and splash a sizzle of tamari on it. Or make a tempeh Reuben sandwich with a slab of sauted tempeh, sauerkraut, cheese, and Russian dressing on toasted rye. Ummm!

But it STILL is soy, so some consiracy-minded folks think it will make you gay...http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327

I don't really know about that--I was gay long before I started eating soy!